The Quest

by Max Brand

  “Twenty men have tried to ride him, and twenty men have been shied off his back the way that you’d flick watermelon seeds out between your thumb and forefinger. Understand? Dolly Simpson hit a corral post with the back of his head and was buried. And Mex Taylor hit the ground, and then Sullivan jumped on him and punched him full of holes. There was a Negro, too, and I disremember what his name might have been. He was savaged to death by Sullivan, too. He’d come all the way from Canada, that Negro. Those three he killed, and everyone of the rest had a mark put on ’em, one place or another. Some got a broken leg, and some a cut across the face, or smashed ribs, or something like that. Everybody that tackles Sullivan has to pay for it. And that’s why I tell you that you’d better not try your hand with him. He’s a devil, is what he is.”

  “Is he?” murmured Paradise Al. And to himself he was saying: Patience and a good pair of hands will unlock any door.

  “I’m not joking,” said Ray Pendleton. “It’s been months, now, since anybody has tried to claim Sullivan by sitting on his back for ten minutes. Tim Drayton is ready and willing to give up all the good that that big devil may do for his string of saddle horses. He’d rather see Sullivan ridden than to keep on supporting Rourke, maybe, because the deal is that Rourke has an easy job until some man can ride Sullivan and take him away. And there you are. It sounds funny. It is funny. But it’s a fact.”

  “It sounds like something else to me,” said Paradise Al.

  “What’s that?” asked young Pendleton.

  “Sounds as though I’m going to try that horse and get my foolish neck broken,” said the tramp. “Will you show me the way to the Drayton place?”

  Ray argued no more, and ten minutes later they were jogging down the trail and over the hills toward the Drayton Ranch.

  It was a different matter, that house, from the tree-embowered place of the Pendletons. It was simply a wide-armed rambling shack of a house or, rather, a collection of many broken-down shacks, all adjoining. There was not a tree around it. There was not even a stroke of paint to hide the rotting nakedness of the wooden walls. There was not a green blade of grass nearby, but all was beaten to brown dust by the hoofs of many horses. There was a hitching rack long enough to accommodate fifty horses on one side, and the wooden top bar had been gnawed into waves by the teeth of horses, and the ground had been pawed full of deep holes.

  “That’s the Drayton layout,” said Ray Pendleton. “Confound them, the place looks like them . . . pretty bleak and miserable. The Draytons are like that.”

  “What started the trouble between your two families?” asked the tramp.

  “Uncle Rory never even told you that?”

  “No, not even that. He was pretty silent about things out here in this neck of the woods,” said the tramp.

  “Everybody knows that yarn. And it was a pretty silly thing, I suppose,” said Ray Pendleton, “except that it’s been dignified by the number of times it’s been told, and the number of years we’ve fought over it. The first Pendleton to come out this way was named Thomas J., too. He had a fool yellow dog that ran out one day on four legs, and came back on three.

  “So Grandfather Pendleton took the back trail of that yellow dog, and it brought him to the camp of a prospector up in the hills named Drayton. When he asked Drayton if he’d shot a dog recently, Drayton said that he hadn’t, but that he’d shot a sneaking yellow coyote that had been around his camp. So grandfather damned Drayton and, to cut a long story short, they up and shot one another. Grandfather thought that Drayton was dead, left him in a pool of blood, and crawled onto the back of his horse and rode home. The next day he died from the loss of blood, but Drayton hadn’t died at all. He’d just been stunned.

  “When he came to and found out what had happened, he said that one Pendleton was not enough for him. He wanted more of our blood. So he gave up prospecting and squatted on a piece of land. Then he built a shack, which is the first part of this house in front of you, and fetched out his wife and kids. Ever since then we’ve been fighting the Draytons and the Draytons have been fighting us. Just now it’s an even break. There’re six men dead on each side, but that doesn’t count the women that have died of heartbreak and things like that.”

  “Maybe it’s time for this feud to die out,” suggested the tramp curiously.

  “Die out?” repeated the other, looking up at the sky. “Well, I suppose it would be a good thing, but it won’t happen, not at this late day.”

  “Why not?” asked Paradise Al.

  “Because,” said young Pendleton, “nobody knows who’s in the wrong. We say that the Draytons are, and they say that we started it. Of course, neither side will give in. The Pendletons don’t quit in the middle of a fight, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Draytons don’t, either. They’re a hard lot, and they’re fonder of fighting than of chewing tobacco.” He laughed a little as he said this.

  Paradise Al looked at him with a sort of cold, calm wonder. Twelve men had died, and still the foolish quarrel about one wounded dog had not ended.

  “Look here,” said Paradise Al suddenly, “aren’t you running into danger, coming over here to their house this way?”

  “Of course, I am,” said the other, “but so are you. But I don’t think that Tim Drayton would let us be hurt, so long as we’ve come to try Sullivan. He’d rather see that horse ridden, and get rid of Rourke, than kill all the Pendletons in the world, I’m sure.” He looked up, and then added: “There’s Rourke now!”

  A little red-headed man came out of the house, a red-headed man with a ragged white beard and a ragged red mustache.

  When he saw Ray Pendleton, he raised a shout: “Pendletons!” And he pulled a revolver with either hand. Ray Pendleton pulled up his horse.

  “Hold on, Rourke,” he said. “Any reason why a Pendleton can’t try his hand on Sullivan?”

  Three or four other men had come to doors and windows in the ramshackle house by this time, and now the shrill voice of a woman cried out: “Don’t none of you dare to shoot a bullet or I’ll be after you! Lay down them guns!”

  IX

  Ascreen door was pushed open, closed with a jingling slam, and there stood little Molly Drayton. Paradise Al looked at her with both pleasure and pain—pain because he had hoped that on second sight she would prove a disappointment; pleasure because she fitted into his conception of what a woman should be as exactly as a bullet fits into a rifle gun barrel. The color of her hair and eyes, her size and her weight were all perfect. It was not that she was so very beautiful, but she combined all those variations from ideal beauty that were, to him, more than perfection.

  “Hello, Ray,” she said. “What’s all the noise about?”

  “We’re not making any noise,” said Ray calmly. “Your tribe is doing the shouting, old son.”

  It seemed a little odd to the tramp that the girl should be addressed as “old son”. He registered the term, to be thought over later on.

  “Yeah. They seem to be a little noisy. Pipe down, you!” called Molly Drayton. “I see you’ve got the young cousin along, Ray. What’s he for? Trouble?”

  The calm insolence of this did not disturb the tramp. He had been insulted before, and to a skin like his mere words were as water to oiled silk.

  “Al has come over to ride Sullivan. That’s all,” said Ray Pendleton.

  “He’s come over to which?” she repeated.

  “He played a little joke on you people, there in Jumping Creek,” said Ray Pendleton, embroidering a trifle upon the facts.

  “And now he wants to show you what a real rider can do.”

  She turned her glance upon Paradise Al, and then she smiled. It was not a friendly smile, either. Never before had Paradise Al seen such an expression on such a face. He could realize, as he looked back at her, the full extent of the deadliness that underlay the feud.

  “There’s the corral . . . here’s Rourke to show you the way . . . and there’s still enough of us left to enjoy the play,” sh
e said.

  Paradise Al understood perfectly. The play, to her, would be a tragedy, involving the death of a Pendleton. Therefore, it would be a very good play, indeed.

  The tramp shrugged his shoulders; then he followed the example of his companion and slid from the saddle to the ground.

  Other people came out of the big house now—women, men whose clothes bulged significantly, here and there, and sagged as with the concentrated weight of metal. An eye less keen even than that of Paradise Al would have suspected Colt revolvers instantly.

  Rourke came up to him. He was at least two inches short of even the meager height of the tramp, and, when he was very close, he halted and grinned. “You’re going to try Sullivan, are you?” he said.

  “Yes, I’m going to try Sullivan,” repeated Paradise Al.

  “You’re young,” said the other, “and that’s kind of too bad. “But this way, brother.” He turned, laughing.

  “Hold on,” said Paradise Al. “I’ve come to get the horse. I’m riding him back here a week from today. Right now, I’ll take him off on a lead, thank you.” For, as he said to himself, patience and a good pair of hands will open any lock, if only there is time enough.

  Rourke halted and spun about. “It’s a game, is it?” he said.

  A very old, very white-headed man came slowly forward. “What would you be doing to Sullivan for a week?” he asked.

  “More than you people have been doing to him for a year,” said Paradise Al.

  The old man blinked. “I dunno,” he said. “I dunno what Tim would say to this. Molly, what you think?”

  “Dad would say that it’s a bluff,” said the girl.

  “A bluff,” said the old man, nodding his head. “Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me.”

  “Look here,” said Ray Pendleton to Paradise. “You’re not letting us down, Al, are you?” He added, after a moment: “You wouldn’t make fools of us . . . ?”

  Again was the word implied, but not spoken. The inborn courtesy of Al prevented that.

  “You see, Ray,” said Paradise Al, “the fact is, the Draytons are the ones who’ve been throwing the bluff. They talk of their challenge to the whole world to ride the stallion. That’s all right. But they’ll give nobody a chance to work on the horse. They want the whole show here under their eyes, and maybe they put pins in the saddle blankets, for all we know. That would be a real Drayton trick.”

  Ray Pendleton blinked at him when he heard this remark.

  A wide-shouldered youth stepped forth from the gathering cluster to say: “You don’t look like much to me, Al Pendleton. And no Pendleton ever lived that could talk like you’ve done and get away with it.”

  “Hush up, Sammy,” said Molly Drayton. “This is only pure bluff. Al Pendleton will no more try to ride Sullivan than . . . well, that hawk is nearer to being a dead buzzard than he is to doing what he boasts about.”

  Her glance went upward, and, following it, Paradise Al saw a hawk sweep out of the top of a tree and dart up into the blue road of the upper sky.

  “Excuse me, Ray,” said the tramp, and instantly conjured the long Colt from the scabbard that was strapped to the leg of his “cousin”.

  The saddle might be a strange world to Paradise Al, but guns were his element. In the land of electric lighted streets, gun plays were more common, in fact, than ever they had been in the wildest days of the West. In that same land, men stood for hours every day in the shooting galleries, trying to shoot the celluloid ball from the dancing top of the fountain, counting it very bad work, indeed, if they missed one in ten times.

  This was not a shooting gallery. The range was long, and the target was in an awkward position far above his head. But he jerked up the gun confidently and fired. As he drew the steel, he was aware that half a dozen other weapons had instantly gleamed in the hands of the Draytons. But that pleased rather than concerned him.

  In answer to his first shot, the hawk swayed to the side, dodging like a runner on firm ground and leaving a thin tuft of feathers floating in the air. It seemed to the tramp that, having found the right range, he hardly needed to look, in firing the second time. The next shot, in fact, tumbled the wide-winged bird of prey out of the sky as if off a high perch. Down it came, whirling, and by chance it struck the ground not two steps from the place where Molly Drayton was standing.

  As the heavy, solid noise of the impact came to the ears of Paradise Al, he said: “There’s one half of what you wanted. It’s not a buzzard, but it’s dead.”

  Rourke ran and picked up the dead bird by one wing. High as he lifted it, the long feathers of the other wing almost touched the ground.

  “By thunder,” cried Rourke, “a man that can shoot like that can ride, too, no matter what you say!”

  “But you people won’t give me a hand with the stallion,” said Paradise Al, with a ready discourtesy. “I know the cut of you . . . and you talk about wanting to see Sullivan ridden, but you won’t give anyone a fair chance.”

  The same young man who had spoken before cried out now in a shrill voice: “You gonna try to bluff us out because you managed to make a lucky hit with that bird? I’ll take you on, and I’ll take you on right now. Ride a horse? You couldn’t ride a hobbyhorse!”

  Al looked at him. Then he said: “Somebody take that young fool away and shut him up. He’s too young to die. A week from today, I’ll ride Sullivan back here and, if anybody in the Drayton outfit wants trouble, that will be the time to get it. I’ll take you one by one, as many as there are to come.” As he spoke, he laughed just a little. It was not pleasant laughter. There was too much cruel confidence in it. Saddles were not the element for Paradise Al, but guns were a different matter. Death by being hurled to the ground from the back of a horse was one thing. Death by bullets was quite another. Already there were sundry scars upon the body of Paradise Al. He knew all about the pain that guns can inflict, and he was not afraid.

  Suddenly Rourke said: “What kind of bunk is all this here? Here’s a gent that’ll take Sullivan and keep him for a week, and guarantee to ride him back to us. Well, let him have him. If there’s anybody here that wants a party with this Pendleton, a week from today is the time to claim him for a dance. Ain’t that right?” He did not wait for a vote or an answer. He simply called out: “This way, Pendleton! I’ll get the hoss out of the corral for you.”

  He turned his back and strode away, and the whole crowd followed him, compelled by that ready mastery of the situation. So they turned a corner of the house. As they did so, Paradise Al saw Sullivan in the corral.

  There was no other animal in the enclosure. Even had there not been, he told himself that he would have known the beast. There were sixteen hands and an inch of him, and he was by no means pretty to see. His hips stuck out too far. No amount of good oats would ever fatten those great outstanding ribs. His knees and his hocks were like the iron-hard joints in the boughs of an old oak tree. His head seemed like the work of some inspired but half-demented sculptor. Even from a distance, it seemed to Paradise Al that he could see the red flare of the eyes of the stallion.

  All the courage oozed out of the heart of the tramp. He had come expecting to find a horse; he felt that he was face to face with a winged devil.

  X

  Ray Pendleton was staring at the beautiful animal. “There’s a horse for any man,” he said. “Any man would want to ride it . . . or a flying dragon, too, or a wishing carpet, say.”

  “How many men did you say that brute killed?” asked the tramp.

  “Three or four,” answered Ray. “They all needed killing, too. Some people say that Sullivan had a real job in the world . . . that he was sent down here to weed out a few of the thugs.”

  This suggestion did not seem to make the tramp feel any more at ease.

  “There’s Sullivan,” said the red man, Rourke, pointing to the blood-red stallion. “I’ll fetch a saddle onto him for you.” He went into a shed, brought out a saddle, and climbed the fence into the corral. At si
ght of his coming, the stallion lifted its head and whinnied a soft welcome.

  “He likes Rourke, anyway,” said Paradise Al.

  “Sure he does, the way the lions like the keeper at feeding time. You might as well get yourself ready and loosen up to tackle him. Or are you only going to lead him home?”

  “You let me do things my own way,” said Paradise Al. “I’m going to make that big red spot behave like milk and honey down the throat. You’ve got a rope on the pommel of your saddle. I’d like to have it.”

  He was given the rope, and Rourke himself, having saddled the horse, stood by and hitched the rope to the neck of the stallion. “Now you’re all right,” he said to Paradise Al. “Gonna hypnotize that hoss, are you?”

  “I’m going to ride him back here at the end of a week and give you a show,” said Al.

  “Good,” said the other, grinning. Rourke was a rather pale little man, and there was an evil in his eyes and in his whole face that peered out at one, particularly it peered out at Paradise Al at this moment.

  “I throw in the saddle,” said Rourke. “It’s made to order to fit the back of that stallion without squeezing him none. There’s three or four of the boys that’ve died out of that saddle, but you’ll have better luck, I guess. That saddle has steel in it. When he falls over backward, if you was to be caught under, that saddle wouldn’t crush in on you. There’s enough steel in the arch of it to hold up five tons. Believe me, because I seen it made.”

  He nodded and laughed as he spoke, and the red of his hair was like the red in his eyes, and that was the red of the great horse, also.

  Al accepted the horse and the saddle on him without a murmur of thanks. He led the big fellow back to his own borrowed mount and climbed up on the back of the mustang.